


the end, the end, (oh i grow so weary of the end)

by spinninglilies



Category: Helix Waltz (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Feels, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Light Angst, Multi, foggy is ba qi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-11 16:03:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20548880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spinninglilies/pseuds/spinninglilies
Summary: ba qi isn't sure when it begins, but she knows when it all ends.orfoggy is ba qi, and ba qi is foggyand magda is chu, but we all know that already





	the end, the end, (oh i grow so weary of the end)

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by my crack-ish headcanon that ba qi grew up to be foggy. im sorry vassa

Ba Qi isn't sure when it all began, but she knows when it ends

Or she thinks she does. It's been years since she first noticed it, and she isn't even sure how many years passed before she had first noted it. But the three hundred and sixty five days pass over and over and nothing she does seems to halt it.

She watches Chu live out the worst year of her life over and over again and nothing works against it. She tries to steer her down a different hallway, or prevent her from going to a garden party on that specific day, and yet nothing changes. The days pass and Chu dies, and time marches on in the same circular motion it always does.

Until something changes. A chance meeting that Ba Qi is _certain _did not happen before. A small act of kindness that she would have remembered for _sure_. It's the little things, these small increases of affection, from the emperor, the prime minister, the guard.

One year Chu does not die, but lives happily - this time with the princess, and Ba Qi thinks it's over. That now her mistress can continue with her life, and Ba Qi will be at her side through it all.

The next day she wakes up and it's the first day at the palace again.

She nearly screams, except Chu is still asleep and she gets precious little rest. So she stuffs her sleeve into her mouth and nearly cries in anger.

_it isn't fair. none of this is. just let her be happy. _

And then she continues as if nothing has changed. Because she is Ba Qi, and she is plain and outspoken and unyielding loyal and she will always be.

Next is the Grand Mentor, then the emperor, and Ba Qi realises that Chu must find love in all available avenues before she is released, she thinks.

_( She does not know. Ba Qi knows nothing. Loong has never been so gracious as to think of the servants as people, only tools in this game )_

Ba Qi adopts a new strategy. She continues with her carefree behavior, since it seems to yield the most results. She can't prevent any of this - any of the illness or heartache - but she allievates the pain when she can.

She hates them all - the smiling serpent, the vicious Liu, the cruel Ju, even the emperor and all the rest. If it weren't for them, Chu would be happy and alive, or dead and at peace.

She hates them, but they are necessary. So she continues to live out the decades by Chu's side, in this repetitive farce.

Slowly, she gets them. Asaro is easy to push - his flirtatious manner creates many more chances. Zhao Lang is harder, but she gets him eventually.

The last one is the guard. An Hu adores her mistress, and Ba Qi chose him as the final one, because she knows that unlike the others, except maybe the Grand Mentor, his kindess will persist. Chu will be happiest with him

The last night, she goes to sleep, knowing that it will end there and she can face the King of Hell with a clear conscience.

_ 

The next morning she awakens, not in heaven or hell, not even in the same bed she's had for the past few decades.

She wakes up as an infant in another woman's arms.

It takes a few years for it to all click. Things have changed, centuries has passed since her final death. They're all long dead, the members of the imperial court. A new dynasty. A new family.

Her father is a spice merchant, her mother his second wife. She's rich now, and prettier, she supposes. The luxurious lifestyle of a young miss, she thinks, will be comfortable.

It isn't. 

Her new name sounds foreign, her new parents seem distant. She spends her days making spice packets, trying to recreate the sweet fragrance Chu had, unlike Consort Liu's heady scent. This life isn't hers - it's another girl's, and Ba Qi feels as those she's robbed this comfort from another.

She leaves the first chance she gets. Her father is a kind man, and instead of sending her into a loveless arranged marriage, he allows her to escape the nest. She moves to the city, supposedly to manage her father's business there.

She doesn't age. It's subtle, but sure. Her parents pass and her servants leave and she _does not age. _It's a sudden familiar horror and she knows that she cannot stay.

She packs up her things - her spice packets, her sketches of outfits Chu wore in her memory. She takes on a new name - Foggy, and travels all of Mandaria in search of a new kind of home. She becomes a diviner, her unique foresight giving her a new power. She causes small chaos here and there, revelling in never waking up in the same place for longer than a few weeks.

One day she sees a ship to Finsel and Foggy thinks suddenly of Chu's stories.

A magical land of elves and balls. She packs up her things and leaves once more

_

Finsel is, in many ways, similar to the imperial court. It's the endless beauty contests, the whispered rumours and not knowing who to trust. It's familiar and comforting and Foggy sinks into a strange sort of contentment.

She's a child again, in some ways. She enters the tavern and meets Blackglove and she _knows _she's heard of him before. It's the stories of her first life breathed to life, and Foggy drinks it all in.

It reminds her of Consort Chu.

She never participates though. She refuses to sully herself with that again. She watches and meddles and laughs and never gets attached.

Not until Magda Ellenstein enters her shop

Magda is slim, delicate and fine-boned, much like Chu was. She has blue blue eyes, which is a difference, and it reminds Foggy not to call her by the wrong name. It's quite against her own will, but she grows closer to this girl.

_This_, she thinks, _is what Chu should have been_. 

There are ghosts of the former admirers of Chu in Magda's own friends. Juven Sakan shares Asaro careless flirtatious manner, his bold impudence. Barris Sakan is a strange combination of An Hu and Zhou Heqi. Willow, she privately thinks, is nearly as reckless as the Princess was.

She sells Magda her designs, the ones based on Chu's gowns, and watches as Magda gets them altered and dyed into near replicas of Chu's outfits. On a whim, she gives Magda the perfume, the one based on Chu's fragrance.

It hurts in the smallest of ways, to let them go. But she thinks Magda appreciates them, and somebody ought to.

_

The strange peddler, Loong, is a bit too familiar for her liking. Something in his eyes, something in his smile, reminds Foggy of the cold days in the palace where nothing went right.

It all comes together the day she sees Magda walk away from Loong with a box. A sudden switch, and it all falls into place,

Magda is Chu and Chu is Magda and Foggy's whole life has been jerked around by this fool of a man.

The night before he leaves Finsel, she appears in his room. She glares at him as he stares in contemptuous confusion back.

"Hurt her again, and I will kill you"

She means it. As Ba Qi, she couldn't protect Chu. As Foggy, she can protect Magda.

She doesn't intend to fail again.

**Author's Note:**

> quick note : all the npc's are at level 5 with me, so everything is still kinda guessed out and assumed oops.


End file.
